The innovation: an artificial heart half the cost installed in an artery, with a much less invasive intervention of half an hour rather than six hours.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
Who ?
In 2018, two undergraduate students from the École de technologie supérieure (ETS), Jade Doucet-Martineau, in mechanical engineering, and François Trudeau, in automated production engineering, met a cardiac surgeon, Gabriel Georges, resident physician at the University Institute of Cardiology and Pulmonology of Quebec (IUCPQ). The latter is dissatisfied with the heart pumps on the market intended for patients suffering from heart failure – there are 30 million in the world, 6 to 7 million in North America. These “ventricular assist devices” cost $156,355, according to a 2015 report from the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services, to which must be added $191,178 for the operation and hospitalization. They require an intervention of more than six hours.
The three co-founders decided to focus on what is known in medical jargon as an “unmet clinical need” by designing a less expensive heart pump requiring less invasive intervention. A functional prototype is ready the same year, a first patent application filed. Last July, it was announced that four patients had successfully received their artificial hearts designed by Puzzle Medical. The young Montreal company has 25 employees. Jade Doucet-Martineau, François Trudeau and Gabriel Georges are respectively CEO, technical director and scientific director. Its medical director is Philippe Généreux, an interventional cardiologist at Morristown Medical Center.
The product
The ModulHeart designed by Puzzle Medical is a small tubular device that is inserted into an artery, powered and connected by a cable to a control module the size of a credit card that the patient can wear on his belt.
This device replaces pumping blood until a real heart can be transplanted. Existing models, “we know it works, the survival rate is 70% in patients who have one, against 40% for those who do not,” says Mme Doucet Martineau.
The specificity of the ModulHeart is that its implantation does not require open-heart surgery and weeks of hospitalization. “Only a very small incision on a patient who is sedated”, explains the CEO. The device is divided into three parts inserted one by one, then reassembled inside the artery, “like when you build a boat in a bottle”.
Instead of occupying a cardiac surgeon for more than 6 hours, the implantation can be done inexpensively by an interventional cardiologist in less than 30 minutes. Hospitalization is for a maximum of 24 hours.
Manufactured “95%” by the Puzzle Medical team, the ModulHeart costs half the cost of the devices currently on the market, assures Mme Doucet Martineau.
Challenges
Deciding to make a high-tech device like the ModulHeart yourself has resulted in substantial savings. But at the cost of great effort. “Initially, we thought that the experts were external, but we realized that we were the experts on our product. We developed all the techniques, brought in people from Europe and the United States to train us. »
The financing of the adventure was particularly incredible. “When the pandemic hit, we were doing a fundraising round. We had been on scholarship and grant programs for two years, with our own money. At the time, we were 20 years old; our personal money, that amounted to not much! »
In the end, it was luminaries who had been consulted, those whom the CEO laughingly calls “the godfathers of cardiology”, who agreed to give the company a financial boost.
The future
Puzzle Medical is finalizing a new round of funding, this time Series A, a milestone that typically raises between $2 million and $15 million. “It’s in the eight figures, mysteriously indicates Mme Doucet Martineau. This will allow us to do a feasibility study in three different hospitals, in Canada and the United States. »
This study is a prerequisite for obtaining the right to market the ModulHeart, around 2025-2026. “We want to start saving patients as quickly as possible. Every minute, one person dies in North America of heart failure, and it keeps growing, it’s huge. »